La. Senate agrees to change wording for disabled

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BATON ROUGE - Lawmakers have agreed to rewrite state laws to change the way Louisiana refers to people with disabilities.

A compromise version of the bill (House Bill 63) by Rep. Walt Leger, D-New Orleans, received final passage with a 37-0 Senate vote Monday.

The nearly 300-page measure will swap out words like "handicapped" with "impaired" and make other changes across hundreds of statutes. References to "mental retardation" will be replaced with "an intellectual disability."